


the art of rocking

by cptsuke



Series: Post 32 [3]
Category: The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>cougar's last word takes up permanent residence in his skull and he doesnt even know what he meant</p>
            </blockquote>





	the art of rocking

  
Rock.   
  
It's his last fucking word.   
  
So that's what Jensen's doing. He thinks.  
  
  
He travels. Properly travels. Not like the last year of jumping at shadows and moving everytime the itch under his skin screamed _run_ at him.  
  
He takes photos of the buildings that tourists crowd around. Climbs to the highest point in every town just to look over everything. Sends photos with the backs of tourist's heads to Pooch.  
  
It's not rocking. But it's not bad either.   
  
  
He still itches. Still avoids the water. Still buys doubles.   
  
But he's learning to settle himself. Learning to let the waves touch his ankles when he walks along the shore. And, okay, he still hasn't learnt to shut up when he's by himself in public. But baby steps right?  
  
  
Adrenaline doesn't pump through his veins, in fact the only time his heartbeat raises is when the rickety bus he's on winds its way along a single lane road with 100ft drops. He closes his eyes and doesn't know whether it's fear or anticipation that speeds his pulse.   
  
This, he thinks, does not rock.   
  
  
In Sao Paolo, he bangs a chick with bright pink glowsticks in her hair. She smiles lazily in the morning, her hair a tangled mess of knots and Jensen can't help but think she looks more beautiful like that. The glowsticks are just hollow colourless tubes now and Jensen wonders if this is rocking.  
  
  
In Tijuana, a guy with a cowboy hat propositions him with a drawling texan accent. It feels both wrong and fucking right when Jensen accepts. That morning Jensne pulls a gun on the texan accent, expecting to see a scarred eye and a scowl, even though that past was buried with a shotgun and nuclear explosion.   
  
That time? Jensen wasn't really feeling the rock.  
  
  
There's a girl in Nogales - whether it's Arizona or Mexico Jensen doesn't fucking remember - with long brown hair and old, sad eyes. It's a quick and dirty in a bathroom stall. Club music vibrates their eardrums, she hums off-key and it almost feels right.  
  
Except it's not, because it feels like a different bathroom stall, a different partner, many years back. And suddenly Jensen has that itch under his skin again, like he's crawling with bugs. His fingers twitch uncontrollably and he feels like he's chased down a double expresso shot with twenty pixy stix, all the while snorting cocaine.   
  
He chokes a goodbye and runs for the fucking exit. Those sad eyes look like long expected pain and somehow that's fucking worse.  
  
  
He revisits La Paz, mostly out of spite. On the trip out he gets roughed up for 'protection' money.   
  
He revisits them in a pretty spiteful way too.  
  
He hasn't killed a man in a year and a half, he doesn't think anyone would be proud of the way he goes about it now. But there's a certain satisfaction in taking off the hand brake and letting the jeep - along with the thieves' corpses - roll off the edge of a very fatal looking cliff.  
  
  
Somehow he ends up playing white knight in Puntarenas. The meeting with an old woman whose been conned is purely coincidental and completely happenstance - things that once meant someone was orchestrating shit from behind the scenes - but now it really is just chance that Jensen finds himself tracking down a conman's banking trail.   
  
He's followed the money trails of paranoid psychotics, compared to that? This shit was child's play.  
  
He finds the guy and his crew, they're sloppy and hide like fucking children. After Jensen empties their ever so secure accounts, he pays them a personal visit.  
  
The old lady with her nest-egg returned kisses his cheek and Jensen's sure he rocked that in a pretty spectacular manner.  
  
  
It's been six months since Stegler and Pooch and Antigua. Six months since Aisha. Jensen feels okay. Mostly. He thinks.   
  
It feels good - getting back into some sort of action. Not to be egotistical or come across as a fucking hippy but helping people is something Jensen could get used to. Seems like something he could do on a regular fucking basis.  
  
But first he needs a better computer. And _holy fucking hell_ does he need to brush up on his skills. A year and a half of sitting on his ass moping has made him hella rusty.   
  
It's fucking embarrassing really.   
  
He does a little Robin Hooding to get himself back into shape. Routes the transfers through the CIA's NNP division. Makes the money disappear after leaving those accounts. Because he can. Because it's fun.  
  
He maybe tips off some intrepid reporters, lets them stumble onto the daisy chain links between the lost money and the company. It's actually quite fucking funny as the rich people he's stolen from start attacking the agency in a very public manner.   
  
Of course it'll blow over, shit won't hold up under any serious forensic accounting and eventually any court case will be dismissed. But the rumours and the suspicions will remain. Jensen can practically see the conspiracy theories writing themselves.   
  
If all he'd done was spread a little more distrust in the CIA then he would still walk away amused. The money is just a nice fucking bonus.   
  
A Carlos Alvarez makes a one-point-six-million dollar donation to Casa Alianza and Jensen thinks maybe that's a pretty good sort of rocking.  
  
  
His rocking _thing_ breaks down crossing the Bolivian-Peru border. One minute he's almost asleep, forehead against the window's hard metal edge, the next he has to get out. Everyone's looking at him, _of course_ they're looking at him. He's a six foot pale blond guy who sticks out no matter what crowd he finds himself in. But this time he can't rationalise it, just kicks up holy hell until they let him off the bus.  
  
It's a long fucking walk to the closest town from the border. Something feels off about Bolivia. He can feel it. It feels like _deja vu_. It feels like a memory of something that never happened.   
  
He almost gets taken in a tiny town where he sticks out even more than usual. Like everything Jensen's ever done, it's blind luck and chance that he gets away before whoever the fuck they are find him.   
  
But they catch up to him, fifty miles from town.   
  
He likes to say he doesn't think about the past. Only somehow it still defines every fucking thing he does. It's written in the way he moves - _soldier_ \- the way he fights - _soldier_ \- the way he acts in public - _broken soldier_ \- and the way he sleeps - _dangerous broken soldier_.  
  
It's written into the soil fifty miles from the tiny little town. Written in bloodshed, bullet shells and a sharp fucking knife.  
  
Jensen does his best to bury it's tell tale signs deep in the soft soil.   
  
He doesn't know whether they're bad guys or guys that didn't like him in their town or maybe they just thought they saw an opportunity to rob a rich _gringo_.  
  
Jensen doesn't know. Doesn't plan on ever knowing. Just takes one of their motorbikes and puts as much distance between him and his _dangerous broken soldier_ ways.  
  
  
Pooch tries to contact him again.  
  
Many, many times.   
  
Jensen finally calls him back. Has trouble switching back to English. He hasn't spoken it in six, no seven months now. It feels weird. The words make his mouth feel funny, so he switches to portuguese and hopes Pooch follows all right.  
  
 _Jake, come visit. Settle down for a bit,_ he says.  
  
Jensen thinks Jake is the oddest sounding word ever. Pooch called him that once while they were still soldiers. He only kind of remembers it.   
  
" _Você lembra-se do último tempo que você chamou-me Jake?_ "  
  
Pooch sighs like an old man. He probably is an old man now. That thought nearly makes Jensen hang up the phone. Jensen wonders if he, himself, is an old man yet.  
  
"Antigua. I remember."  
  
" _Não, eu quero dizer antes._ "  
  
"Kiev, right?"  
  
" _Você chamou-me Jake e eu pensei que eu ia morrer._ "  
  
"But you didn't."  
  
Neither of them mention the fact that the only reason he survived that episode of fun times in black ops was because of Roque. That shit never got unironic.  
  
" _Porque eu sou um filho tenaz de uma cadela._ "   
  
"Yeah you are." Pooch sounds sad. So sad. Which is stupid, because Jensen is rocking. Well, learning to. So he tells Pooch that.  
  
" _É tá bom, eu aprendo a balançar. Você sabe que isso é o que ele contou-me._ His last fucking words. What the fuck does that even mean?" He chokes at the end, his throat drying up like a month spent in the desert.   
  
"Hey, kid, it's okay. Come up he.."   
  
Jensen hangs up the phone.   
  
Maybe he should visit Pooch. Go north and chat and pretend he isn't fucked six ways to sunday. Pretend he's Corporal Jake Jensen again.  
  
Even though that's what he's trying to avoid. Trying to bury it all deep into the soil, bury it with the bodies and the lies and secrets and everything that happened even though somehow no one knows or cares.   
  
He still doesn't know how that all slipped under the radar. He's not asking for a medal, hell he'd prefer it if no one ever knew he was there, but still. There was a rogue nuclear state, with bombs in everyone's backyard. And they _stopped that_. It's safe to say they kicked its ass even as they had their own handed to them.   
  
And they were made to pay for it every motherfucking step of the way.  
  
And yet the world keeps moving, threat of nuclear war gone again. No one wants to know, _cares to know_ how that all just went away.   
  
Jensen has some serious fucking rage that he's somehow been feeding for the eighteen months, in between all the going crazy and trying to kill himself.  
  
He'll have to deal with that. Somewhere. Sometime. Maybe fucking Springfield is a good place to do that.   
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> translatey stuff from online!translator of questionable usefulness
> 
> do you remember the last time you called me jake? 
> 
> No, I mean before.
> 
> You called me Jake and I thought I was going to die.
> 
> Because i am one tenacious son of a bitch
> 
> It's okay, I'm learning to rock. You know that's what he told me.


End file.
